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`Ilio Nui
`Olu`olu
USA
826 Posts |
 Posted - 02/24/2005 : 4:07:56 PM
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I use a click, not necessarily a click "track" for everything I record personally. When I think of a track, I think of a track specifically dedicated to a sound or sounds that happen on a specific beat; usually 1/4 notes. For my own recording, I use an ancient Yamaha RX-15 drum machine (circa 1985) with a MIDI pulse from my recordind software set at whatever I need. I bought mine new, but they can be found in swapshops for $35. I like a high-hat closed or shaker sound, with the emphasis on the first beat. With a very sensitive mic, if the level in the headphones is too high, you can bleed the sound onto your recording. When you use the high-hat or shaker, you can turn the volume way down and still hear the beat. Have you ever been to a loud concert where someone was playing maracas on-stage, without a mic and you can still hear them? That's what I'm talking about. Also, don't be afraid to put a pillow on the floor and keep time with your feet. It'll actually help you play ON-THE-BEAT.
If your recording is set to Bars-and-beats, with a click that matches, your editing will become an order of magnitude easier. If you played it perfectly in measure 5, but screwed up the same passage in measure 19, it's an easier cut-and-paste. I actually charge considerably more to artists who can't or won't use a click.
Think of the whole process as practicing with a metronome. And, if you like the sound of your metronome, record it onto a track.
In closing, someone is going to say that playing to a click will make the recording sound too mechanical. Hogwash!!!!
Okay, let the games begin.
Dave
PS: jwn- new pic
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Edited by - `Ilio Nui on 02/24/2005 4:38:57 PM |
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Lawrence
Ha`aha`a
USA
1597 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2005 : 6:28:17 PM
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So the new pic... Is that the Dental pic or the Mental pic???
(all puns intended)
Click Tracks: Having worked in the Academic Music World for a Decade, I can say the the academes are in general, very fond of Click tracks or at least Rhythm tracks. EXCEPT FOR SOME OF THE JAZZ PLAYERS. But some others of the Jazz players liked really really fast rhythm tracks even when they played slow. The most extreme example was that I had to write a computer program on a PDP-11 that would generate a set of PRIME NUMBER click tracks that were in sync only every 8 to 16 seconds (don't remember the exact interval - but it was long). (tech note: no numerical rounding error acceptable either). A number of musicians, including the famous Guarneri Quartet then played their parts LIVE, while listening to the click tracks (and they all stayed in sync!). This was for the "background sound" for a piece that was an attempt to finish Charles Ives unfinished "Cascades" Symphony. I have used click tracks to too, for my own playing, in my primitive way. I tend to get confused at what rate to set the click to... 4BPM 2BPM, etc.
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Mahope Kākou...
...El Lorenzo de Ondas Sonoras |
Edited by - Lawrence on 02/24/2005 6:40:30 PM |
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hapakid
Luna Ho`omalu
USA
1533 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2005 : 7:50:11 PM
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When I record I spend a lot of time dinking around the rhythm section of my keyboard until I find something that works and at the speed I play. A standard click track, thoughtfully provided in Garageband, is too distracting for me.
I just lay down 3-5 minutes of whatever beat I chose, then play the guitar or uke track over that.
Hawaiian music is so syncopated, that is, anticipating or dragging the downbeat, that I can't listen to a single click track. Sometimes a standard 8-beat drum kit rhythm (often called "rock ballad") works fine, other times a boom-chick-boom-chick country beat helps. Since I'm a guitar player, the guitar usually gets recorded first. So if I want to play an ipu or some other rhythm instrument later, I will be seriously screwed if I didn't play to some kind of steady beat. Ditto if I didn't tune to a common source. Often I just plan to record a voice/guitar song and just start playing. Then I decide to add uke and, voila! the tuning is off a quarter step. It's not hard to retune the uke a hair, but it's harder with my homemade stand-up bass.
Although I've recorded a lot by just picking up an instrument and pushing play, I now try to arrange the song a little bit and count out the measures for each stanza plus the turnaround and write it out as a series of chords and "/" marks to help me strum/pick through the whole song on the guitar.
No one will every mistake me for a perfectionist, but this is what works for me.
Jesse Tinsley |
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`Ilio Nui
`Olu`olu
USA
826 Posts |
Posted - 02/25/2005 : 05:33:26 AM
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Jesse,
To take you method a little further, do you take the rhythm track you laid down on the keyboard, record an audio track of it and listen to it with headphones while you record? That's a great method. I will do that also, especially if I need a swing feel or latin feel. Slack key, although sounding straight ahead, usually isn't. It's the counter rhythm of the fingered dotted eights against the quarter note bass thumb that grabs our attention. Sometimes you just have to create a rhythm that fits that feel.
Since this discussion area is about gear, almost any cheap keyboard (Casio at CostCo for $75) made in the past couple years will allow you to create a rhythm loop to play with. Most recording software has some sort of click. As with Jesse, I don't like the sound of them, but they do work.
Dave |
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wdf
Ha`aha`a
USA
1153 Posts |
Posted - 02/25/2005 : 1:24:57 PM
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Lawrence sez:
quote:
I had to write a computer program on a PDP-11
Lawrence, did you write it in Macro-11?  |
Dusty |
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Bwop
Lokahi
USA
244 Posts |
Posted - 02/25/2005 : 2:01:59 PM
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Aloha e Jesse,
Did you say "spend a lot of time drinking around the rythym section".... Aparantly, that's why one has a pianist in the band-- so you have a place to put your beer.
You all are so far beyond me. When I record, it's "every (wo)man for (her)himself", "the game isn't over til the last (wo)man is in", and "a riff in time saves nine". If you can't do it on the back porch, why do it at all? (I know that's a challanging statement, but, well??). |
Bwop |
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Lawrence
Ha`aha`a
USA
1597 Posts |
Posted - 02/25/2005 : 6:07:35 PM
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quote:
Lawrence, did you write it in Macro-11?
So there is more that one old computer geek around this place - huh?
Yes - I think so but with a BASIC front end. There were something like 16 separate click track channels going 300 yards to another building where the concert was played live, and 16 amplified mic feeds comming back to the basement where the computer and recorders and sythesizers were. The composer was Larry Austin who was last seen hanging around the Denton Texas campus of U of T.
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Mahope Kākou...
...El Lorenzo de Ondas Sonoras |
Edited by - Lawrence on 02/25/2005 6:09:57 PM |
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`Ilio Nui
`Olu`olu
USA
826 Posts |
Posted - 02/25/2005 : 6:27:34 PM
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Now you tell us you were using BASIC. I thought you were writing real code like RSTS-11. Was that BASIC before Gates' stole it? Or before he called RSTS DOS, or after Java became "J". I get so confused. Don't you just wish "open source" really was?
Dog - tired |
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Lawrence
Ha`aha`a
USA
1597 Posts |
Posted - 02/26/2005 : 09:22:19 AM
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Hey, I was using BASIC as the front-end brah...
...with assembler code for all the speed critical stuff.
(Yes - DEC BASIC preceeded Gates by close to a decade)
These daze I would use Visual C++ as the front-end and
would probably still use assembler (god forbid) for the
time-critical stuff (I like to say that cause it drives
C++ purists crazy).
Lord knows, we all want our click tracks to be time critical!
And the music generally goes super-critical just before it explodes. 
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Mahope Kākou...
...El Lorenzo de Ondas Sonoras |
Edited by - Lawrence on 02/26/2005 09:23:39 AM |
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Reid
Ha`aha`a
Andorra
1526 Posts |
Posted - 02/26/2005 : 09:51:09 AM
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And before DEC, it was Dartmouth/GE Multics BASIC, around mid 60's (or whenever) just after FORTRAN II. (Unix is 1 Multics.) MS didn't even write the first BASIC interpreter for the PC, it was a university (GW, I think I remember).
...Reid |
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